Wow – what a great morning of worship!  It was one of those days (for me) that you just can’t help but praise God.  I like those days.

Admittedly I wasn’t feeling it when I got to church this morning.  I had overslept (accidentaly turned the alarm OFF instead of snoozing) and was running late.  I was preparing for an extra long day with the Back to School Rally coming up after church, and I was having a really hard time waking up.  But by the time we were on the chorus of the second song I was ready to dance!

God is good!

Anywho, here’s the list:

• Salvation Day (Beeching)
• Happy Day (Jesus Culture-style)
• We Will Worship You (Whittaker)
• Here Is Love (Cook/Rees)
• kids message
• I Am Free (Egan)
• announcements
• message
• Reign In Us (Starfield)
• communion

I mean, how can you NOT be happy with Salvation Day and Happy Day back to back?  Seriously?

It was a great time of worship, and Pastor Chris followed it up with a great message on how to love your enemies a la David.

After church we headed over to President’s Elementary School for the Back to School Rally, and gave away around 500 or so backpacks filled with school supplies.  Lots of local churches and businesses joined forces to fill them and give them away – along with lots of other fun goodies at the rally.  The hot dog line at our church booth was mighty long.  I think they cooked & handed out around 400 hot dogs this afternoon!

It turned out to be a fabulous day… and now I’m tired.  It’s a good tired though, a very good tired. 

How was your weekend?

It’s a beautifully cloudy day today in Western Washington -we even got rain overnight last night.  After the temps in the upper 90′s last weekend it is a most welcome change!

It’s been a couple of busy weeks for us around here – with the church campout 2 weeks ago and Jim filling in for Pastor Chris last weekend, but I am hopeful that as we wind down to the end of Summer that things can calm down a tad but… maybe.

Ah well, onto the list:

• Salvation Day [E] (Vicky Beeching, Jonny MacIntosh, and Sarah MacIntosh)
• Hosanna (Praise is Rising [F] (Paul Baloche, Brenton Brown)
• You Never Let Go [F] (Matt Redman, Beth Redman)
• Indescribable [Bm] (Laura Story)
• kids story about Abigail
• Everyday [Ab] (Joel Houston)

This was our second week leading Salvation Day, but the first week that Pastor Chris has played it.  It worked out pretty well, but we get to work on it again for next week.  Everything else fell under the heading of “extremely well known” and it was great to see people really entering in and not having to think about how the melody goes or what the words are.

I will be glad when Summer is over though – it’s been crazy with the swinging door we have had through the Summer months with people being gone of vacation.  Although I myself have missed a week or two as well, so I can’t get on anyone too hard!

How was your service this weekend?

Wow – I hadn’t realized how long it has been since I posted a setlist!  Life has been just a tad busy I guess.  Sorry about that!

This week’s topic was centered around worry in our home groups, and the passage we were focusing on was 1Samuel 13:1-14.  It highlights a time when Saul decided to take matters into his own hands instead of waiting on Samuel, or, rather, waiting on God.

Worry and impatience.  Anxiety.

There are so many times in the Bible where this comes up and causes problems for people!

With that in mind, our setlist focused on giving our anxieties to God and keeping a heavenly focus.

• Forever [F]
• Today is the Day [F]
• Rain It Down [A]
• We Will Worship You [D]
• kids storytime
• Beautiful One [E]
• announcements
• message – Staying Small in Your Own Eyes
• Trading My Sorrows [G]

It was a really great sermon, and hopefully we got a good recording of it.  I will post it this week if so.

I really liked leading Rain it Down and We Will Worship You back to back – the first focuses on crying out to God in the midst of the storms instead of trying to run away from them, and the second calls for is to cry out when we get too comfortable, to content.  These songs remind us that we need God in both the good times and the bad – not just the bad.  It is so easy to forget about God when everything is going well… but we can’t!  Our focus needs to be fixed on Him daily.  Our desire needs to be to have a relationship with Him daily.  We need to seek His face… daily.

And that is often so hard to do!

When things aren’t going our way, it is easy to cry out to God.  It is easy to admit that we don’t have it all together.  It is easy to admit that we need Him, because we (obviously) can’t do it on our own.  We need to translate that same need to when things are going our way too.  We still need Him, and we still can’t do it all on our own.  We just so often don’t recognize our need.

We need to continually focus on Him.

Father’s Day is such a great holiday!  It’s a chance to honor our earthly fathers and our heavenly Father that gave us life.  For those blessed enough to have a Daddy, it is a chance to take the time to thank them for teaching us and showing us a glimpse of our Father in heaven.  For those of us whose Dad’s are no longer with us, it is a chance to remember them.

Today we had a BBQ after church to honor the men in our families – and we were blessed that two of our guys were willing to man the grills to help feed everyone.  The ladies brought some tasty side dishes, and we had a housefull of people!

In our house today we are trying to have a lazy day.  The fact that it’s raining outside helps – Eric can’t go outside and do yard work!  After having a busy weekend filled with late nights, it’s kind of nice to just relax.  Eric is sitting on the couch playing scales on te guitar, A is trying to find someone to play games with her & M is playing games on the computer.  It’s quiet, which is a very good thing.

However it is days like today that remind me how much I miss my dad.  He was killed 8 years ago, and while I am thankful for a(nother) day set aside to remember him, it does make me sad that I can’t call him & wish him a Happy Father’s Day. So for those of you that have your dad’s, don’t take them for granted.  Take the five minutes to call them and let them know you care.  You never know when it may be your last chance.

But back to the point of this post… the setlist!

• Sing, Sing, Sing [A]
• You’re Worthy Of My Praise [E]
• Reign In Us [F]
• Agnus Dei [C]
• kids storytime
• Best Friend [C]
• announcements
• Message – “Red Bull may give you wings, but God gives you springs!”
• Unashamed [D]
• communion
• Amazing Grace (acapella)
  

We learned a new song today.  Quite literally.  Jennifer R found “Best Friend” Wednesday morning, we got the chart together Friday around noon, and we (as a band) put it together this morning around 9:15.  It’s a great song though, so we will be doing it again soon – just in a slightly higher key!  Sorry, but I’m still not a tenor, and no amount of making me sing at the bottom of my range will change that! 

Other than that and “Unashamed”, the songs were pretty well-known.  We taught Unashamed last week (as special music), and led it during communion today, so I’m hopeful that people are picking it up.

How was your worship service this weekend?

As always, this post is part of the Sunday Setlist blog carnival over at TheWorshipCommunity.com – check it out to see what songs were sung at churches all over the world.  This week is the 100th consecutive week, whic is just kinda cool.

Wow – yesterday was such a beautiful day here in Washington – in the 70′s, bright, clear, sunny skies and just relaxing.  Today?  Well, its not raining… yet.  There is a nice breeze and it’s in the mid-60′s, but cloudy.  Overall it’s not bad though!

Today’s sermon was on Samson… on how God gives each of us gifts and on how he failed to use them to Gods glory.  Pastor Chris preached on Fatal Flaws.  In that vein, we approached our worship set through the lens of grace.

• We Will Worship You [D] (Whittaker/Ingram)
• Everlasting God [Ab] (Brown/Riley)
• Your Grace Is Enough [F] (Maher)
• Sweetly Broken [F] (Riddle)
• kids story on using our gifts to glorify God
• Everything To God [A] (Anderson)
• Message – Fatal Flaws
• Unashamed [D] (Neufeld/Neufeld/McKelvey)

We led Unashamed as special music, as we haven’t ever sung it @ FRF before, but I did see a few people singing along (which was great!)  It is my hope that everyone was able to really listen to the words and recognize once again the amazing gift that we have been given.

Hopefully we got a good recording of the sermon this week!  If so, I’ll get it linked when it’s uploaded.  If not, then it will be like the past few weeks, unfortunately.

How was your service this morning?

To see what songs were sung at churches all over the world, take a look at TheWorshipCommunity.com!

After the amazing amount of rain that we experienced yesterday, it was so refreshing to wake up to bright sunny skies – albiet with fog floating around.  Sun, just in time for those Memrial Day BBQ’s that everyone is planning.  Let’s hope the weather continues to improve here in Washington!  It’s still a bit nippy out there today, but at least it’s not raining.

This morning our church surprised me too – there were lots of people there!  I generally expect that on a long holiday weekend we will have a much smaller attendance, but it wasn’t drastically smaller, and we even had some new people there.  Yay!

I was joking with the band this week that maybe I need to shave my head & grow a beard, because half of our songs today were written by Carlos Whittaker… and if somehow you don’t know who that is, well, you need to.  Head on over to RagamuffinSoul and get acquainted.  Hey, the topic was grace, and they just fit!

Anywho, here’s the list:

• Marvelous Light [A] (Charlie Hall)
• Jesus Saves [G] (Carlos Whittaker/Mia Fieldes/Jason Ingram)
• We Will Worship You [D]  (Carlos Whittaker/Jason Ingram)
• Grace Like Rain [Am] (Todd Agnew/Chris Collins/Edwin O. Excell/ John Newton)
• kids story
• Rain It Down [A] (Jason Ingram/Carlos Whittaker/Phillip LaRue)
• announcements
• Message – “Under New Management”
• Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) [D] (Edwin Othello Excell/Louie Giglio/John Newton/John P. Rees/Chris Tomlin)

Yep, it was a message about grace… and how desperately we need it.  Hopefully the recording worked (we have been having some issues between the recorders & the sound board – hopefully that will b resolved soon!)  If it did, I’ll post the link to it later this week.  Or you can head over to FalconRidgeFellowship.com and take a look to see if it’s posted.

Some high’s & lows…

The high point for me was split between We Will Worship You (I love how it’s quiet, then gets really, really loud!) and watching the kids learning the new motions for Rain It Down.  Miss Jennifer did a great job working them out, and the kids were really getting into them.  Overall the whole set was a high for me – they are all songs that I love to sing and have a lot of energy to them.  That and we had almost a full band again this week after a month of missing people each week.

The low point?  Looking out and wondering if I’m doing a good enough job.  Most of the songs today were either fairly new or we haven’t done them in a loooooooong time, so there were quite a few people that weren’t singing much.  I never quite know how to interperet that… do they just not know them yet, or are they a style that isn’t their “preference” or is there some other reason.  I felt that quite a bit today.

That’s my take on our service today – how was your service?

This post is part of TheWorshipCommunity.com‘s Sunday Setlist blog carnival.  Find out what songs were led at churche all over the world this weekend!

Yep, I’m a little late getting this one posted… sorry.

Mother’s Day… a day that has been set aside to honor those who birthed us.  Who nurtured us (birth mom’s or otherwise), and taught us how to be.

It’s a great day.

I got some really cool gifts from the girls – both handmade.  A built a little wheelbarrow for a potted plant to sit on, and M gave me a gift in a jar recipe for “Chocolate Lover’s Cookie Bars” and a little desk calendar of “I love my mummy because…” with notes she hand-wrote in.  I also got flowers from Mr. Man.  And the sun was shining… a beautiful Western Washington day in the high 60′s.

But on to the list…

• All Because of Jesus [G] Steve Fee
• Glory to God Forever [G] Beeching/Fee
• Only You [G] Andy Park
• Here I Am, Send Me [G] Martin Anderson
• kids storytime
• Jesus Saves [D] Whittaker/Fieldes/Ingram
• announcements
• message
• We Will Worship You [C] Ingram/Whittaker
• communion

Yep, it was a Fee Band & Carlos Whittaker kind of day.

We introduced Jesus Saves & We Will Worship You this weekend, one as a kids song and one as a “listen to this while you ponder communion” song.  They will be making repeat appearances in the coming weeks.

May is going to be an interesting month for us… we have at least 2 people missing each week I think.  One of our vocalists has been gone for a couple of weeks visiting family, and there has been such a huge hole there.  This week one of our electric guitarists played acoustic to fill in for the acoustic that will be gone for 3 weeks… and his missing electric left another hole in the sound.  It’s just different when the sound changes from what you have gotten used to, ya know?

Well, that was our list – what did you sing?

To see what was sung all around the world, head over to TheWorshipCommunity.com!

It seemed to have passed me by without even realizing it… May Day was yesterday!  I finally remembered and wished someone “Happy May Day” oh, around 10:00 last night.  C’est la vie.

So that makes today the day after May Day.  May 2nd.  And a beautiful day in early may it is here in Western Washington… with the snow level around 2,000 feet and the low-hanging clouds and temps in the 50′s.  Low 50′s.

Ugh.

Yes, it’s cold and blustery – but we aren’t under water, so it’s all good!

Well, I was supposed to be postinga MIA setlist this morning… I was supposed to be taking the weekend off and celebrating Mother’s Day with my mum-in-law, but we had a sick kiddo and didn’t want to spread the germs.  So, I’m posting it from the perspective of the stage, as usual.

So, without further ado… the list:

• Glorious (Paul Baloche/Brenton Brown) [Bb]
• Glory To God Forever (Steve Fee/Vicky Beeching) [G]
• God of Wonders (Marc Byrd/Steve Hindalong) [F]
• My Savior, My God (Aaron Shust/DD Greenwell) [C]
• kids story
• Counting On God (Jared Anderson) [E]
• Message – Somebody Pinch Me
• Doxology

Glorious is one of our most requested songs these days.  It seems that everyone loves singing it – and playing it (which is usually a pretty good thing!)  Having two electric guitars on that one makes it just a bit more fun too, as David plays the bridge during the intro – about an octave higher than I sing it.  It’s just kewl.

Glory to God Forever is a new song for us – we just introduced it last week – and it seems to be fairly well received so far.  It’s played quite a bit on the radio here too, so it’s fairly well known to a good chunk of the congregation already.  It was great to see a few people fully entering in this morning while we sang it (even while others were still learning the words).

Since I was planning to be gone, we had split the songs up between a few people so they could all lead together, so Art led the next two songs and I got to sing harmony (yay!)  We haven’t done God of Wonders in quite a while, and it was nice to pull it out of the file and shake off the dust a bit.  And I have to throw out kudos to our media gal – the background she found for it this morning was so stinkin’ cool.  It looked like we were flying through space and getting to see God’s extra-planetary creation up close & personal.  Everyone on stage wanted to turn around and watch it.  Good job Carol!

Scott & Julie did a great job with the kids story this morning too – Scott played the part of Peter sitting in jail wonderfully, and I think the kids had a lot of fun getting to be the angels getting him out of jail.  They were even extra quiet so they didn’t wake up the guards!

So, that was our Sunday… how was yours?

**as awlays, this is part of the Sunday Setlist Bloggy Carnival over at TheWorshipCommunity.com – check out what was sung all over the world this weekend!